


Stopping

by ljs



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, post The Angels Take Manhattan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 08:45:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post The Angels Take Manhattan, a moment between husband and wife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stopping

He folded the last page of _Melody Malone_ – the afterword, yes; his wife's idea, yes, no question – and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket before he opened the TARDIS door.

The console room shimmered green, but it was empty.

Biting back protest (unhelpful, what was he even protesting) and more tears (also unhelpful), he stepped in and locked the door behind him. The room was empty, but the TARDIS wasn't. Somewhere in here was River. She had the vortex technology, true enough, but she'd never leave him like this.

He absently circled his wrist with his other hand, as if feeling the pull of handcuffs in a Library-world, bound to time, bound to loss. Then he remembered the brokenness under her skin, there on that collector's staircase, closed his eyes, and bellowed, “River!”

The TARDIS echoed her name back to him in falling fading notes. River was the TARDIS's as well as the Ponds' child, after all....

“What are you shouting about?” River said from the foot of the stairs. 

He went to the railing and looked down at her, _seeing_ her. She was red-eyed and tired, barefoot and still dressed in that mourning-coloured frock, hair reflecting a hint of Amelia-Pond ginger in the soft light. And she was inspecting him just as closely as he was her, just as worried about her spouse's well-being as he was about her.

“Didn't know where you were,” he said, and clattered down the steps before she could come up.

She cupped his face with her hand, firmly, sweetly, the kind of touch that kept him with her even when they were apart. “All right?”

“Not particularly. But not _not_ all right.” He cupped her face too, so that they were mirrors of each other. Except not, because he no longer was in the databases and her ending was only that, a library treasure, binary code or words on a page in the interior of a tweed jacket –

He dropped his hand and he kissed her so that he would stop thinking of endings. He kept kissing her because she was here now and that was all there was.

Murmuring, she slid her arms under his jacket and pulled him in until they were chest against chest, hips against hips. Murmuring, she kissed him back, warm and deep and liquid. She _was_ yowzah, she so very much was. But – 

He pulled back and gazed at her. His lovely River, child of Amelia and Rory, child of the TARDIS, but belonging to herself (despite thefts, losses, the story the Silence had wanted to write for her) and to him. 

“Whyever are you stopping?” she said huskily. “Come to bed, sweetie.”

“Soon,” he said, “wait here,” and then leapt up the stairs to the console. He made a few halfhearted attempts to set a course, but then brushed his fingers against the controls and whispered, “Just take us where you want us to go.”

There was a hum from the TARDIS, almost as if she was laughing at him. Typical.

Then he galloped back to River and pulled her down to the bottom step. She went with him, settled against him, let him twine her fingers in his. “Doctor, sweetie,” she said. “What are we doing?”

“Put your head on my shoulder, honey. And let's –” he kissed her lightly, there on her killer lips – “let's just stop for a moment.”

“You _never_ stop –”

“For this moment, this one moment with you, I do. I am. Stopped here, with you. Only you.”

She gazed at him. “Doctor.”

He pushed her head down onto his shoulder. “Wife, shut up.”

Chuckling, a sad sound like a fast stream over immutable stones, she kissed his ear and then rested her head just where he wanted.

They held hands, there as time hummed around and over and against them, and for as long as she held on, he didn't think of endings.


End file.
